


The Last of the Time Lords

by AtomMudman



Category: DC Comics, Doctor Who, Homestuck, Marvel Comics, Star Trek, Ultima (Video Games), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-11 04:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15965030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomMudman/pseuds/AtomMudman
Summary: The First Doctor and his companion X-51 stand at the end of time itself. But who is the stranger joining them to witness the final fires of the universe? Is the Doctor the only Time Lord here...or is that a title which can also belong to Dio Brando?





	The Last of the Time Lords

On the world that birthed Doctor Omega, it was known that even infinity came to an end. He remembered a poem or proverb about a diamond mountain, and the little bird who wore it down over billions of years with its beak. It'd been a man of the mountains, his hermit friend of old, who'd taught him that story. It was meant to be a story about the nigh-absurd length of infinity, but immediately Omega had taken it as a story of determination. And the hermit had smiled and laughed, and they both reflected on how their people knew, more absolutely than the other species of this universe, that even infinity had a death.

 

And so here he was, standing outside his time-and-spaceship the _Cosmos_ , with his companion, the android X-51. All around them were the fires of the very end of the universe. 

 

He had met X-51 after Denis and Fred had left the company of he and his granddaughter, and when he'd finally consented to X-51's offer to try steering his ship, he had been able to leave his young relative on Earth to continue her studies, with perfect assurance he could return for her. In return X-51 had a say in where the ship went next. He had taken them to Xeriphas, to ancient Earth, to a planet that served as the final resting place of the human  _Voyager 6_ probe. But the android had always wanted to observe the final moments of the universe, and with the  _Cosmos_ he wouldn't have to sit around and wait.

 

It was a bleak place. It could be nothing but. Omega had not wanted to come here and he was grateful he'd left Susan behind on Earth. She was too young for this sort of thing. The planet they'd landed on was surrounded by an unending starless dark; flames erupted seemingly from nowhere as physics became strange. When heat death consumed the order of the universe, gravity and electromagnetism and all else simply stopped working. It was as if the universe was having a colossal seizure, in one last attempt to celebrate the lively energies that were now dying off for good.

 

Among the strange sights they passed on their way in were haunting echoes of worlds that, if they actually existed, were marching slowly to oblivion. They had seen an old man confront a young girl in a chair in a small decaying room, and screaming masses of people turning themselves into metallic spheres. They had even passed a planet which looked like Omega to be his homeworld. Each time they approached these phantasms they faded away, until at last they were here, in this rocky place surrounded by flames.

 

“I suddenly find myself regretting my decision,” X-51 said.

 

“Ah, but it's a sobering experience, my boy. Dreadful, dreadful—but inevitable! Would that our universe could last forever, but...I'm afraid there is nothing we can do.”  
  


“I suppose not,” the android said sadly. Then he frowned, though his metallic face did not move; Doctor Omega had become talented at reading his friend's expressions, or what passed for them. “Doctor...we're not alone here.”

 

“What do you mean, hm? How could we have company, unless another time-traveler has decided to join us?”

 

“That's what I'm afraid of. Think of about it, Doctor—what time-traveler could resist coming out here? To the _end of the universe_?”

 

“Eh? I should like to think that my fellow time-travelers are much more responsible.”

 

“I've heard about a renegade Time Agent...and there's a man from the 25th Century by the name of Carter...”

 

As X-51 trailed off, Omega pretended not to hear him. But in a way he hadn't. Instead he had been honing his ears on the rubble around them, listening for the slightest sound. He thought he'd heard something. Suddenly a noise caught his ears. The reverberating click of boots pacing over stone.

 

The Doctor lowered his voice at once. “Let us proceed carefully, my boy. This could be dangerous.”

 

“So you believe in irresponsible time-travelers now?”

 

The old man ignored him, instead seeking out their fellow guest of ruin.

 

Omega ducked his head low and moved towards the source of the noise. This place had multiple stepped tiers cut into the stone, and shadowy pillars obscured much of their surroundings. But soon they were near to the pacing figure. He was humanoid. It was difficult to discern in the pale gloom of this place, but he seemed to be a blond human, clad in golden and green clothes. Oddly enough his joints were adorned in golden pads in the stereotypical but medically-inaccurate symbol of a “heart,” which was the Doctor knew instead to be the silphium leaf, a symbol of fertility among the people of the Roman Empire. (He knew he wanted to visit Rome someday, at the height of its decadence.) Who was this man?

 

Whoever he was, he stopped his pacing.

 

“I know you're there.”

 

An Englishman, it seemed—from the Liverpool region. Doctor Omega urged X-51 to remain silent, and hidden.

 

“I warn you not to test me. Come out. Now.”

 

Omega could now see that a thin scar adorned the circumference of the man's neck. But more chilling than that was what glittered inside the man's mouth. His incisors were uncannily long, like those of a vampire. No, that was impossible—there were none of that foul race left, or so said Rassilon. Perhaps he was merely from a vampire-like species, of which there were likely thousands.

 

In any case, however, Doctor Omega had what he dared to call an ancestral fear of the vampires. At the very least he knew not to underestimate one. He stood up from his hiding place.

 

“Doctor, what are you doing?!” X-51 whispered.

 

“You heard what he said, my boy,” Omega proclaimed loudly. “There's no sense hiding. We may as well come out.”

 

X-51 scuttled out.

 

“Who am I addressing, young man?”

 

“You go first.”

 

“Hm? I believe I was the first to ask you the question, sir!”

 

The stranger stayed quiet for a moment, glaring at Omega. The Doctor did not flinch.

 

“Very well. My name is Dio Brando,” the young man said.

 

“And I am Doctor Omega. This is X-51, my companion.”

 

“I see.”

 

Again, this man—this “Dio”—took a moment to stare down the pair of interlopers. He seemed fond of these pauses.

 

“I have no use for you,” Dio said then. “I need to find out where this place is.”

 

“The more pertinent question, sir, is 'when' you are. And I must tell you the truth: we are at the end of the universe, and there are perhaps hours before time and space collapse around us.”

 

Yet another of those trademark stares. Doctor Omega studied the man's eyes, taking care to shield his mind against telepathy and hypnosis. For a moment he thought he saw a bizarre glimmer—yellowish in color, like his clothing. As this flash passed, Dio smiled.

 

“It figures,” he said.

 

“What was that? What did you say?” Omega said.

 

“My universe was destroyed, Doctor. In a manner of speaking I'm responsible for it. But I had died long before my universe did. And by some twist of fate, the destruction of my universe caused me to be reborn here. I have passed from the death of one universe to another.”

 

Suddenly, he shifted his pose, taking a single step towards the Doctor. “Now—Doctor Omega. I have an ability that allows me to tell that you can travel through time. I don't know how you do it, but you're going to give me that power so I can travel into the past of this universe.”

 

“Eh? Surely this is a jest. Don't be so ridiculous! You will never know the secret of how I travel through time!”

 

“Don't try to fight me, old man. I could turn you and that robot thing into smears on the rock of this place, faster than you can blink. If you give me your power, however, I will spare both of you.”

 

Before Omega could unveil the full extent of his ire, X-51 stepped forward. “Mr. Brando. Leave the Doctor out this. If you want to kill him, you'll have to get through me—and my body can be virtually  _made_ of weapons, if need be.”

 

“Interesting—it talks. What's more is that I believe your boast. But those weapons are ultimately useless.” His smile widened. “I'll make this quick.”

 

But then Omega stopped him. “Sir! That thing behind you...what is it?”

 

Hovering behind Dio was a ghostly figure, very faint to Omega's vision. It was the same golden color as the flash that had touched Dio's eyes, and like Dio it seemed human. However, it was dressed strangely, with a tall helmet-cum-headdress, to which were attached ridged tubes. They seemed like scuba equipment, as if this unnatural golden creature was some kind of angelic frogman.

 

Dio's smile changed to a frown. “Interesting. You can see my Stand.”

 

“Your what now? Speak up!”

 

“At first, I wondered if that thing was your Stand—but I can see it actually is just a robot,” Dio said.

 

“What is this Stand you're talking about?” Omega said. X-51 saw now that for some time his friend's hands had been firmly clasping his lapels—a sure sign of the older man's irritation.

 

“Not like it matters, old man, but this ability of mine that you can see is called a Stand, because it stands beside me. A simple name, but it gets the point across. It is an expression of my fighting spirit. And the fact that you can see it means that you have one too.”

 

“I assure you I do not. But that gives me the information I need to know.” The old man looked at X-51 then. “Machine-Man! You can see his 'Stand' on a medium psychic frequency!”

 

“Impossible,” Dio growled.

 

But X-51 was willing to try. His eyes shifted, unseen, to focus in on psychic energy. He kept scanning until suddenly, the golden form of Dio's Stand appeared before him. He began scanning the structure of the Stand at once.

 

“Intriguing. It seems this sort of projection was created by a psychic force being added to his body from an external source. Some sort of piercing object—an arrow, perhaps?—that unleashed a psychophysical change in him that allows him to express his...'fighting spirit' as a tangible being.” He lifted his hand, which then shifted into a crude metallic spear. He pointed it at himself. “I think I can replicate this reaction in myself.”

 

“You're a fool if you think that'll work,” Dio said. “Let me show what a _real_ Stand can do. THE WORLD!”

 

Before X-51 could turn the makeshift spear on himself, something happened that shook the Doctor to his core. As Dio spread his arms, his Stand—THE WORLD—revealed its power. Erupting from its core was a spherical pulse of chronon energy. Or to use better phrasing,  _anti_ chronon energy, calculated at the precise frequency to counteract the positive motion of time within the bubble. In simpler terms, time within this energy field was completely frozen.

 

Doctor Omega realized that his species was immune to this effect when he noticed he had moved his eyes to look at X-51. The android was, like everything else, completely frozen. To him, all that occurred for however long Dio's power worked—if it ended at all—would not happen, though he would be subject to the effects of what happened in this space between seconds. So if Dio destroyed him while time was frozen, there was nothing the Machine-Man could do to fight back.

 

The Doctor took a step towards Dio.

 

The blond-haired vampire was confused—and frustrated. “You—you can move in my world of frozen time?!”

 

“Where Time is concerned, I am its Lord—or one of them, anyway.”

 

“What are you?” Dio choked out then, more in rage than intended intimidation. He did not seem to recognize the distinct name of Omega's race. They must have never existed in his original universe. “I've heard that title before, the Lord of Time. It was the name I heard whispered—” He stopped himself, but then ignored Omega's presence entirely, as if he was just a gnat. “He was another fugitive from another parallel universe. English.”

 

Omega frowned. “What do you mean, he was English?”

 

Dio steadied himself. “I don't care about escaping this place with you—I'll find my own way. Now THE WORLD will finish you.”

 

The golden figure dove for the Doctor, but Omega was ready for him. Nothing lasted forever. Not even the power of THE WORLD.

 

In the end Dio accomplished nothing. Once X-51's momentum returned his Stand-spear plunged through his own chest. But his metamorphic body enabled him to survive this strike. For a second, he seemed to gag. Then, a form emerged from his body, through his mouth—another spirit, similar in some regards to THE WORLD. But the headdress-helmet was here replaced with something more spherical. The air hoses were longer, leading down into a body that sparkled silver over stripes of deep crimson.

 

“Let's see what this Stand—which I call Major Tom—can do.”

 

“This is foolishness. THE WORL—”

 

But Dio was not allowed to finish. The freshly-created entity, Major Tom, was upon him in an instant, and laid a single punch into the vampire's face. He'd been queuing up THE WORLD to stop time and so the Stand had not thrown itself in the way of the attack. It was a sturdy punch, but there was only one, and Dio remained on his feet. It hardly even knocked him back. He smiled once again.

 

“Is that it, then?”

 

But then Major Tom came up again. As its fist came in, Dio sidestepped—and felt a strong tug on his lip and chin. The skin of his face was stuck to the air itself—as if there were hooks cut into his flesh. “What the hell...?” He pulled back again, harder this time, but he only tore his own skin.

 

“It seems like my Stand can freeze space, just as yours can freeze time,” X-51 said. “It's powerful, but the pattern's hard to maintain...the positronic infra-programming will dissolve too in a few hours, along with my scan data on THE WORLD...”

 

Dio ripped his head back then, which tore the flesh from his face. Blood poured down from the wound, and Doctor Omega had to look away. But X-51 observed that Dio's face regenerated quickly, even as his snaking tongue lapped eagerly at the blood.

 

“What sort of being is this?” Omega asked, though he already knew from those ugly fangs. The strips of flesh hung grotesquely in the air where Major Tom's blow had landed.

 

“Doctor, I hate to take the words out of your mouth, but let's get back to the ship.”

 

“A fine suggestion, my boy! But how are you—”

 

Major Tom lunged forward then. Dio once more tried to cry out: “THE WORL—”

 

But the android's Stand connected.

 

“MEKAKAKAKAKAKAKA”

 

THE WORLD threw itself into action, defending Dio even without its time-powers. “MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA”

 

The Doctor watched as the pair traded blows at lightning speed—but not even THE WORLD could escape the power of Major Tom's punches. Soon the Stand was as trapped as its master—frozen in space, in a cosmos near the point of extinction.

 

Omega nearly admired this Dio, in a way. In him lived and breathed an intense ambition, a prideful obsession with being the best, and proving himself as supreme, while simultaneously struggling to hide that he meant to disguise the terror of his own faults. He was so familiar in that sense. In fact the Doctor thought briefly it could be _him_ , but he'd know him, even if he was in a new body...

 

“DOCTOR! ANDROID!” roared Dio. His words were slurred to near incomprehensibility; nearly every inch of him was packed violently into an invisible cone of frozen space. His next words were probably some sort of curse, wrought with the sort of foul language that Omega found most unbecoming.

 

“To repeat your sentiments, my boy, let's get back to the ship,” the Doctor said hurriedly. X-51 ran ahead of him, even as Dio's mind worked furiously to get out of this trap.

 

X-51 turned up his hearing as he sprinted away. Even as Omega huffed and puffed behind him, he could hear Dio. His twisted lips once more cried out, “THE WORLD!”

 

But he was still trapped; X-51 could sense the spatial “anchors” through Major Tom. He began to wonder, though, how long his frozen space stayed frozen. And then he thought of time.

 

“THE WORLD!”

 

Suddenly, he felt his anchors grow weaker, as if—as if time was being sped up from his perspective. Dio was “melting” the anchors early by stopping time with THE WORLD.

 

Dio cried out the name of his Stand once again, and suddenly he was free. Mutilated, but free. He began rushing forward now, and X-51 found that his artificially-induced Stand was already fading. The only thing that would save them now was the fact that THE WORLD had been temporarily exhausted by Dio's use of it to free himself. If he could use it again, he'd be right behind them before they could escape.

 

The Doctor was too slow. Every bone in his body was stubborn, and he adamantly refused to accept help even if his life was in danger. But this time X-51 couldn't let himself care about Omega's wishes. “We're almost there, Doctor!” he cried, and his arms immediately became cables of self-increasing length. Omega's face lit up with anger at the sight but soon he was held safely but uncomfortably in the robot's arms.

 

“Put me down! I'm not yet in a wheelchair, am I?”

 

“But there's the _Cosmos_ , Doctor. Get ready to lock the door.”

 

X-51 pushed strength down into his legs, thrusting himself forward towards the ship. A single bound was enough to make it. He was right at the door now, inches from climbing in.

 

But Dio was right behind them. Even without THE WORLD he was fast, likely a product of his vampire body. X-51 was ready for him, however.

 

“Major Tom,” he whispered.

 

The spacesuit-man emerged, his fists at the ready.

 

“MEKAKAKAKAKAKAKA”

 

“No!!” Dio cried out. He'd been a fool for not using THE WORLD, and now that mistake would likely cost him his life. In an instant the Machine-Man and Doctor Omega were aboard the _Cosmos_ , and Omega secured the doors. He dashed for the control console, and the android joined him, handling the coordinates while the Doctor started the engines.

 

Even as the ship began to emit its usual wheezing sound, the sound of steel on moldy steel, there was a fresh chorus of noise from outside the ship. Dio couldn't move his mouth enough to stop time, but THE WORLD still moved in accordance to his thoughts. _CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG_ “MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA”

 

“What is that rabblerouser doing to my ship?” the Doctor exclaimed.

 

“Don't worry about it; we're almost out of here.”

 

“Yes, we must escape into the past, my boy!”

 

Just then, the pair heard the sound of the first time: the ominous Gothic clang that came from deep within the bowels of the _Cosmos_. Like the church bell out of a horror movie, this bell warned the passengers of the ship when they were in severe danger.

 

“The end,” the Doctor whispered. “It is the end of everything.”

 

“Doctor, if we don't get out of here, we'll be smashed on the rocks of the Vanishing Point.”

 

“Yes, yes, Event Two. Fear not, my boy—even the end of time itself is not the end for—” The pause the Doctor allowed himself was brief. “—us?”

 

X-51 didn't even wait for Omega to tell him to look at the scanner. A quick look revealed that the burning world they'd walked in, which had become Dio's tomb, was completely gone. Swallowed by the blackness. For a lingering moment, the android thought he saw Dio outside the ship; but instead it looked to be another blond man. No, he _was_ Dio; just dressed differently. On his head, for example, was a light blue cap of some kind. There was something about his cap that stood out to Omega and X-51—recently they had been in America in the late 19th Century, and the horse jockeys back then wore caps like those. It was like a ghost, an afterimage, gone in a single second, returning to those half-glimpses of dreams that had appeared earlier within this storm of final energy.

 

Once the dark had fallen, there was no word to describe it. What was out here? All matter, all energy, had burned down to nothingness. Yet the _Cosmos_ existed in _something_. For all he'd learned about it, X-51 was sure that the _Cosmos_ needed to exist in a medium. He wondered if the outer shell had been destroyed, with the internal dimensions persisting somehow. But no—the ship was flying. Flying in a sea of absolute nothing.

 

“It seems, my boy, we were too late to escape the instant of final destruction,” the Doctor said, once more tugging at his lapels. “Nevertheless, my ship has survived. Hm! And so we may return to the past whenever we please.”

 

While X-51 believed him, there was something strange just now striking the android's eyes. “Doctor, it looks as if this darkness is now opening up into other universes. Unless something is developing within the void.”  
  


“That sounds like a rightful theory. We are drifting into another universe. We are drifting into the dimensions that exist outside the time vortex!”

 

Omega had no words which could adequately describe the creatures that dwelled in this void, which soared past them unseen, in the darkness. Time-eaters and leathery flying reptiles released their voiceless cries into the silence, while the avengers of broken moments glided by like Angels of Death. But they were supposed to be invisible within the formless night, and he could now see the outlines of their swooping forms. There was _light_ , and that light was what X-51 was now watching closely.

 

Yet it was the Doctor who recognized them first. He seemed horrified upon making the realization. “These are cracks in time. We must make sure to steer the ship away from them, or they'll erase us from existence.” His voice dropped low, and for the first time X-51 was sure that genuine fear crept into the old man's voice. “What could have caused these, I wonder? Ordinarily it takes something catastrophic, like the explosion of a time-ship...”

 

“Doctor, I don't suppose our ship explodes in the future and radiates these cracks back in time, do you?”

 

“It's possible, my boy, it's possible. I-I think I should engage the fast-return switch...”

 

Even as he did so, however, sliding backwards in time at an ever-increasing rate, there was a _THUMP_.

 

“What was that?” the Doctor said at once.

 

“Is Dio still out there? Maybe it's his Stand...”

 

“No, it's not that simple, X-51. Look!”

 

Gesturing now to the scanner, Omega pointed out that there was now a figure clinging to the outside hull of the _Cosmos_. It certainly did look like a Stand, as it was almost impossible to describe without sounding delusional. X-51 had never seen anything like it before and was sure he never would again.

 

The figure was a green humanoid—even if his head wasn't an emerald skull, or his hands clawed, he would have been abnormal for a human due to his grotesque physique, a maze of gnarled and over-inflated muscles. It was curious to think of him as being able to walk, especially since one of his legs had been amputated and replaced with a shining gold peg instead. This peg flashed at the top with a rainbow of colors, the same rainbow that cycled through the wide staring eyes of the creature. While his lower half wore only a shredded pair of plain white trousers, he also garbed himself in a long billiards-green coat, which also sported the flashing rainbow colors—this time at the lapels. Completing the image was the gold cap that covered or replaced one of his enormous canines.

 

“Free. At last. I am. Free,” the creature growled in a guttural voice. The _Cosmos_ ' exterior vocalized and transmitted his speech to the passengers within. “I figured. It would only be a matter of time. Before someone. Or some-thing. Crossed over into my prison. Thus giving me something to grab onto. And therefore. Giving me a chance to escape.”

 

“Who are you?” the Doctor proclaimed then. “What are you doing here, in this time-smashed space?”

 

“I do not need. To tell my name. To you.”

 

“Are you English?”

 

“I am. LORD English.”

 

The Doctor was taken aback then. He remembered the last time the _Cosmos_ had been forced out into another universe—after narrowly avoiding the mythic Land of Fiction, he had landed on a planet called Sosaria. The ruler there had been named Lord English too, hadn't he...? But this wasn't the same man, he knew that at once. No, this demon had another origin, on a plane of reality he'd not yet discovered.

 

“Let go of my ship, or you'll be shredded by the time vortex,” Omega said.

 

“Ha ha. I doubt it. Fucker.”

 

“What did he just say to me?!” the Doctor declared at once.

 

“I'm going to do some fancy flying and see if I can shake him off,” X-51 told him.

 

“I'm not scared of your. Time vortex,” Lord English said then. “I am. The Lord of Time. I am. The embodiment of the clockwork majyyks. Those. Heroes. They threw me into a black hole. After taking my awesome giant sun powers.” He hissed then and the time-travelers swore they could hear him slobber in the darkness. “But. I am. Not dead. I am. As goddamn fucking immortal as ever. And now. 'Doctor.' Your ship will take me back into material space. And from there. I will have my. 'Revenge.'”

 

“I've been saving this in case we ran into any trouble,” X-51 said then, “so I hope it works. Major Tom!”

 

Major Tom appeared once more outside the ship, maintaining its forward velocity as it began to drum its “MEKA” beat against English's body. He didn't seem to notice, and what was more the space-anchors were not affecting him. There was some sort of aura around him, less than a millimeter from his skin, that simply nullified all offensives raised again him.

 

X-51 felt his Stand fade as the information he took from Dio slowly vanished from his mind. But he still had a bit of energy left, and he was starting to think of what to do with it.

 

“Doctor, take us to an era near the end of the universe, and a place where there isn't any life around for as many lightyears as possible.”

 

“Eh? What do you have planned, my boy?”

 

“I'll let him find out.”  
  


The pair worked together to steer the ship, but now they had fulfilled English's goal. They were now back in their primary universe, and matter and energy once more hummed around them. The silence of English's interdimensional prison was gone. Even though they had brought him into a material space, however, English still clung on stubbornly—perhaps due to that loss of power he mentioned his “Heroes” inflicting upon him, involving his “awesome sun powers.”

 

But Major Tom got to work. This time it didn't aim its fists for English, but for the space next to him. “MEKAKAKAKAKAKA”

 

“I detected a faint gravity field when I froze space around Dio. Those anchors of frozen space have a small amount of mass,” X-51 explained. “If I fuse a bunch of them together I can create a mass which will collapse under its own weight. Which means...”  
  


“Yes, yes, of course!” Omega said then. “It will create another black hole. But I wonder if the ship's engines will be able to...” But he cut himself off. “Of course it will. My ship has escaped black holes before. We just to travel back in time again.”

 

English roared, “You will. Not succeed. I don't know what you're doing. But there is nothing out here. That can help you.”

 

But even Lord English, whose domain was time, could begin to feel the growing mass. Major Tom punched faster and faster, transcending the physical limits of a flesh-and-blood body. English realized what was happening too late.

 

“Get ready, Doctor,” X-51 said.

 

“You will not. Throw me in the hole again. Even with my reduced powers. I can turn this ship to dust.” And a white light began to glow within the shrieking's monsters fanged maw, as if he was gathering destructive energies.

 

But by then it was too late, and the white light he was preparing was instead sucked backwards away from him. He turned his head back, and saw the curve in space as a new gravitational singularity was formed.

 

“I hate. Space Heroes.”

 

And then, with a final roar, he was gone; doomed perhaps to final spaghettification. But his shape seemed solid and beyond mutilation even as he tumbled beyond the event horizon.

 

The same force that consumed English now threatened to draw in the _Cosmos_. Still, X-51 believed the Doctor when he praised the capabilities of his ship. They could make it away if they could only make it to the time vortex.

 

And now the ship was caught between two tunnels—one, a formless darkness that blotted out the stars, and the other, the angelic light of speeding chronons.

 

“Doctor!” X-51 cried as he steered. “The fast-return switch! It will give us the chronal boost we need!”

 

The Doctor pressed the switch then, and sure enough, the release of chronons created an attraction between the _Cosmos_ and the time-tunnel. They were free, and Lord English was only a bitter memory.

 

The ship shook and Doctor Omega nearly fell to the ground. But X-51 was near enough to catch the old man as he collapsed.

 

Surprisingly, the Doctor didn't admonish the android for helping him. Instead, he seemed distracted, and he righted himself almost mechanically.

 

“Doctor?” X-51 asked.

 

“It's over, my boy. All over. Our little adventure at the universe's end has come to a close, and now we are _safe_.”

 

He put so much emotion into the world “safe” that X-51 got to thinking. This adventure had rattled the Doctor more than he'd ever seen before. And he wondered why that was.

 

Omega did not speak again, instead walking slowly to the console in the center of the room. He was not in the mood to offer comfort.

 

But as X-51 watched the old man once more begin his habit of absentmindedly fiddling with the ship's controls, he figured it out. He knew the name of Doctor Omega's people—not exactly a secret the Doctor told everyone. He knew the title those people had claimed for themselves, and it was an appropriate title as well for the two foes they'd just escaped. And now X-51 found himself hoping that never again would the universe see Lords of Time filled with such a hunger for destruction.

 

He shivered then, not understanding why—at least not then. It was dead silent in space, and very quiet aboard the ship, but somehow X-51 thought he heard the sound of a strange and haunting four-beat war drum.

 

\---

 

This story is primarily a crossover between _Doctor Who_ , _JoJo's Bizarre Adventure_ , and _Homestuck_ , but it is worth noting that it also follows what happened to the Doctor and X-51 (Marvel Comics' Machine-Man) after the events of my story, “Claws of the Cat, Fangs of the Bat.” I am following the Wold Newton theory that the First Doctor may have traveled as Arnould Galopin's Doctor Omega in his early days, as the illustrations of Galopin's 1906 literary character are uncannily similar in appearance to First Doctor actor William Hartnell. As such he presently travels in a version of the TARDIS called the _Cosmos_ , which resembles a traditional rocket ship due to its chameleon circuit not having broken yet. This story is set after both the events of _JoJo_ Part 6 (from Dio's perspective) and those of _Homestuck_ (in Lord English's reality).

 

While I drew all eras of  _Doctor Who_ for inspirations, fans will notice references to a variety of  _DW_ stories, including  _An Unearthly Child_ ,  _The Edge of Destruction_ ,  _The Romans_ ,  _The Mind Robber_ , _The Time Monster_ ,  _Planet of the Spiders_ ,  _State of Decay_ ,  _The King's Demons_ , _The Infinity Doctors_ ,  _Storm Warning_ , “Father's Day,” “The Empty Child,” “Utopia,” “Last of the Time Lords,” “The Eleventh Hour,” “The Time of the Doctor,” and “Hell Bent.” I have also included nods, for people to discover on their own, to  _Star Trek: The Motion Picture_ , DC Comics, and the  _Ultima_ games.

 

 

 


End file.
